Tag Archives: global warming

Summary: This might be one of the more important of our 3500 posts. It looks at an often asked question about climate science — how accurate are its findings, a key factor when we make decisions about trillions of dollars (and affecting billions of people). The example examined is ocean heat content, a vital metric since the oceans absorbing 90%+ of global warming. How accurate are those numbers? The error bars look oddly small, especially compared to those of sea surface temperatures. This also shows how work from the frontiers of climate science can provide problematic evidence for policy action. Different fields have different standards.

Warming of the World Ocean

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Posts at the FM website report the findings of the peer-reviewed literature and major climate agencies, and compare them with what we get from journalists and activists (of Left and Right). This post does something different. It looks at some research on the frontiers of climate science, and its error bars.

Levitus 2012 puts that in perspective by giving two illustrations. First…

“If all the heat stored in the world ocean since 1955 was instantly transferred to the lowest 10 km (5 miles) of the atmosphere, this part of the atmosphere would warm by ~65°F. This of course will not happen {it’s just an illustration}.”

“As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregate interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.”
— James Madison’s Speech in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 2 December 1829.

“Big Icelandic storms are common in winter, but this one may rank among the strongest and will draw northward an incredible surge of warmth pushing temperatures at the North Pole over 50° above normal. This is mind-boggling.

… Ahead of the storm, the surge of warm air making a beeline towards the North Pole is astonishing. In the animation {computer model forecast} below, watch the warm temperature departures from normal, portrayed by red shades, explode towards the Pole between Monday and Wednesday.

“It’s as if a bomb went off. And, in fact, it did.”

Samenow demonstrates how weather reporting has become misleading. Forecasts are “mindboggling” and “astonishing”, and their results are described in tabloid-like terms (“a bomb went off”). He makes no comparisons with history to show that this storm looks unusual (see the some actual data below). Predictions create both fear and clicks in modern journalism.

That’s not the oddest aspect of the story. America has thousands of meteorologists and climate scientists, but journalists increasingly turn for lurid copy to climate activists lacking any professional qualifications. Preferencing the analysis of a fiction writer with actual climate scientists is low-grade propaganda, not journalism. But the WaPo does so…

“Environmental blogger Robert Scribbler notes this storm will be linked within a “daisy chain” of two other powerful North Atlantic low pressure systems forming a “truly extreme storm system.” He adds: “The Icelandic coast and near off-shore regions are expected to see heavy precipitation hurled over the island by 90 to 100 mile per hour or stronger winds raging out of 35-40 foot seas. Meanwhile, the UK will find itself in the grips of an extraordinarily strong southerly gale running over the backs of 30 foot swells.”

… Scribbler says such an anomaly “reeks of a human-forced warming of the Earth’s climate”, although some climate scientists aren’t convinced global warming is meaningfully impacting these types of storms.”

Summary: Climate activists provide journalists with vivid stories about global warming, inciting public action to regulate CO2 emissions. Such as the recent surge of articles describing the melting Lyell Glacier in Yosemite Park as warnings of our future. They misrepresent the science by conflating natural and anthropogenic warming, an example of activists’ tactics which have failed despite decades of effort.

The Lyell Glacier in Yosemite Park is one of climate activists’ “poster children” for global warming. Recently there has been another surge of articles such as “Glacier was once Yosemite’s largest; now it’s almost gone” by Tom Stienstra in the San Francisco Chronicle of 16 October 2015…

The glacier has lost about 90% of its volume and 80% of its surface area from 1883 to 2015, according to Stock and Peter Devine, a naturalist with the Yosemite Conservancy who has studied the Lyell Glacier for 30 years. Stock and a crew of geologists measured the perimeter of the glacier with a GPS in the last week of September.

“’I think about John Muir a lot up there on the glacier,’ Stock said. ‘I try to envision what it was like when Muir was here. It would have been so different. I think about what (Francois) Matthes (of the U.S. Geological Survey) said in 1935, about why we need to measure our glaciers, that glaciers are sensitive indicators of climate change.’

“… At one point, Devine turned to get one last glimpse of the Lyell Glacier. ‘It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend,’ Devine said. ‘It’s hard to believe that the glacier that John Muir found and that I’ve loved for most of my life looks like it will be gone.’”

These show one of the major climate scams: describing the effects of two centuries of warming as purely anthropogenic (see other examples below). In fact much of the warming of the past two centuries is a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age. Our CO2 emissions skyrocketed after WWII (see data here), becoming a major driver of warming. Which is why the IPCC’s AR5 says “It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.” (See this for details.). Attributing all glacial melting to our actions is a material misrepresentation of the facts.

Summary: Obama journeys to Alaska and says things. Our journalist-stenographers reprint this as news. They do not consult local experts, and so miss an important part of the story. This post gives you the rest of the news.

We see that last factor at work in journalists’ reporting about Obama’s climate campaign tour of Alaska. Google News shows no stories in the mainstream news mentioning the findings of the Alaska Climate Research Center. I have posted their work in response to previous panicky stories about Alaska meltingin 2009, in 2013, and again here.

“This page features the trends in mean annual and seasonal temperatures for Alaska’s first-order observing stations since 1949, the time period for which the most reliable meteorological data are available. The temperature change varies from one climatic zone to another as well as for different seasons. If a linear trend is taken through mean annual temperatures, the average change over the last 6 decades is 3.0°F.

“… Considering just a linear trend can mask some important variability characteristics in the time series. The figure at right shows clearly that this trend is non-linear: a linear trend might have been expected from the fairly steady observed increase of CO2 during this time period. The figure shows the temperature departure from the long-term mean (1949-2009) for all stations. It can be seen that there are large variations from year to year and the 5-year moving average demonstrates large increase in 1976.

“The period 1949 to 1975 was substantially colder than the period from 1977 to 2009, however since 1977 little additional warming has occurred in Alaska with the exception of Barrow and a few other locations. The stepwise shift appearing in the temperature data in 1976 corresponds to a phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase. Synoptic conditions with the positive phase tend to consist of increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies.”

Summary: Climate change is among our most important public policy issues, and shows our broken ability to see and understand our world around us. Today Esquire gives us a powerful but misleading story about our imminent doom, one rich with lessons for us. Expect to see many more of these before November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. (2nd of 2 posts today.}

“The unwise man is awake all night, worries over and again. When morning rises he is restless still.”
— Norse proverb.

It’s a sad story, but not the one Richardson thinks he’s telling. Glaciologist Jason Box has an apocalyptic forecast for climate change. This has taken a psychological toll on him and his family. Richardson misrepresents the story, however, by neglecting to mention that Box’s views are outside the consensus of climate scientists as seen in the reports of the IPCC.

Like most alarmist articles in the media, the letters “IPCC” don’t even appear. Focusing on the views of scientists with forecasts more extreme than the IPCC while discrediting those on the other side of the curve (“skeptics”) is an attempt to shift the Overton Window — and increase public support for large-scale regulation of energy and economic activity.

Summary: Two voices on the Right illustrate vital aspects of our largely dysfunctional political system, bad news and good news about the climate wars (and the Pope). We can learn from the former and gain inspiration from the latter. {2nd of 2 posts today.}

“It is extremely likely (95 – 100% certain) that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.”

Author Marc A. Cirigliano (see his books) tweeted today about two interesting articles by conservatives. Rush shows us why climate change has become yet another example of dysfunctional US public policy, locked in a futile debate — and religion so often just a prop used by both sides. I am no fan of Jeb Bush, but yesterday he said some sensible things about climate change and the Pope. If we put aside our ideological blinders, both Left and Right can learn from these two men.

Rush shows us the problem

“Meanwhile, we’re in a ten-year cooling period! There hasn’t been any warming. The whole thing is a hoax, and we’ve got this leak of a papal encyclica on the “fact” that global warming is man-made. It’s man-caused and we have almost a religious commandment here to deal with it. I mean, it’s just right out of the Democrat Party.”

Years ago I asked Michael Cohen if there were people on the stage of America who didn’t believe in global warming. Rush proves Cohen correct and me wrong about this (again). But if we listen closely, he makes some valid points.

First, he makes the obvious point about the hypocrisy of the Left suddenly believing the Pope is a guide to the good and the true. Are they going to follow his teachings on homosexuality, the role of women, the use of birth control and abortion? Probably not.

Second, later in the program Rush points to actual science — and demonstrates how it is often lost in the political conflict that’s rendered US public policy so dysfunctional (except in matters of direct interest to the 1% or the Deep State).

Summary: The world has a new and serious mystery, right up there with “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” and “The President’s plane is missing!” What happened to NASA’s satellites that measure global temperatures? They appear to have disappeared from the nation’s major newspapers, their valuable information about global warming lost from view. Today’s post retrieves it to help you understand one of the top public policy issues of our time. {1st of 2 posts today.}

Contents

Where are NASA’s satellites?

How warm was May?

Watch the trend in temperatures!

Climate models predict too much heat.

Who measures the world’s temperature?

For More Information.

Another view of the satellites.

Giving the IPCC the last word.

(1) Where are NASA’s satellites?

NASA has launched a fleet of satellites which (among other things) since 1979 have measured Earth’s temperature in the lower troposphere, with better coverage and consistency than the surface temperature networks — with their spotty coverage of the world’s seas and scores of national weather bureaus (many poorly funded) that the collect land temperatures. Being careful and thorough, NASA pays two teams to analyze the data: Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

Here are the satellites whose sensors — at vast cost — have driven the RSS dataset since 1979, among the most valuable results from the space program (see the end of the post for a more detailed chart).

Oddly, the results of the satellites’ temperature measurements have almost disappeared from much of the news. As a crude measure, there are 2,970 Google News stories in the past year mentioning “hottest year”, but only 637 (21%) include the word “satellite” — and few of those are in the mainstream news. For example, per Google News only 1 of the many “hottest year” stories in the New York Times include both terms, 2 of the 49 science articles in the Washington Post (here and here), and 6 of the 17 in the Wall Street Journal.

The eclipse of this data is mysterious since it would provides a contrary perspective to the “hottest year” stories, since neither RSS nor UAH shows 2014 as a record (details here). But whatever the reason, we need not rely on journalists to tell us the expensive findings of this NASA research.